Booze and Eggs - Galicia part 3

We continued our trip into deepest Galicia by visiting an attractive gorge, reminiscent of the rock-hopping I reported seeing in Australia's Kimberleys.

I'd always imagined Spain as a fairly dry country, but Galicia was trying to prove the opposite and at day's end we wound up alongside yet another broad stretch of water as shown below.










Our accommodation for the night was nearby in a small and quite picturesque little village.












But the guest-house we were in was strangely built around a large rock that actually intruded into the living area. And, nearby, was another attractively little village deep in the mountains.











The following morning we headed off to see two more rural enterprises, both very modern and on  a huge scale that removed some pre-conceptions that much of Spanish agriculture would be small- scale and rather impoverished. One of the businesses we visited was a large winery and the other an egg-laying factory! Let's start with the winery, whose produce we tasted and approved! The entrance was rather grand and much better than many Australian equivalents.




















I like this rather surreal picture on the left of the huge processing building! Ethereal isn't it? And here we are at the tasting ceremony.











And the surrounding countryside was very picturesque!














It even had a large viewing platform! And so we move on to the Compomayor egg factory! As you can see from the facade, this is a very large and modern enterprise. The first thing you'll note is me being kitted out in gear to keep out any diseases I might have from hurting the chooks. And the rest of our party were similarly attired. And the first thing we saw were thousands of eggs!





























It wasn't long before we realised the scale of the operations! Would you believe that the building we saw above housed 750,000 laying hens in cages, many laying an egg a day! The eggs were conveyed on moving belts to a massive floor where they were automatically scanned and removed if imperfect before going on to be stacked for transport to market.

All we could say was 'wow'! But in many respects the place was a sad one. The chooks were crammed into cages where they barely moved. I gathered that their expected life-span would be one year after which they'd end up on plates as schnitzels or chicken Kievs or in take-away wraps or burgers. So theirs was not much of an existence!! I suppose that Australia has similar processing systems, but I'm not familiar as to where they are or what goes on inside.

AS

In Deep Galacian Countryside

Travelling eastwards from the coast we entered into some typical Galician countryside. First however, I think I'll show some pictures of our international party - with people from all over Europe, the Americas, many parts of Asia and, of course, several Australians. In fact, I suspect Australia sent a far greater proportion of its population to Spain than any other nation ... except perhaps for Spain itself!







































En route we saw various rural industries, many abandoned farm-houses, and some scenic countryside. Let's have a look. Many of the pictures are self-explanatory.

Processing chestnuts on the left ... with some fancy machinery. Quaint and somewhat at heal little villages.































I'm not all sure of the significance and purpose of the guy on the left! More bucolic countryside below.





















At a honey processing establishment on the right, together with some of the produce below.






A glimpse of an irrigation lake on the right.
















 And we visited a community based re-afforestation project - shown on the left.

I much enjoyed seeing this landscape and its industries and lifestyle.

AS

On the Road in Galicia

After listening to an avalanche of conference papers for a couple of days in Santiago we headed off in a bus for a 4-day tour of rural Galicia in Spain's far north-west corner. And it was a lovely tour of some very beautiful countryside and a wide range of both modern and historical rural pursuits. This is the first of maybe 3 such posts recording our experiences in roughly chronological order.

Our first stop was at a factory that specialised in transforming green peppers into a tangy marmalade! So it took the peppers on the left, and used the machinery on the right:

to produce this:




We sample the resulting 'marmalade' and it was so delicious that I now have two jars of the stuff sitting in our kitchen awaiting consumption. Our next stop was the port of Cambados on the west (Atlantic) coast. It was highly picturesque, as these photos show.

The building on the left had walls beautifully decorated with sea-shells.

It was also a lovely - warm and sunny mid-summer day to visit this district. But rather than seeing hoards of tourists it was quite laid back and quiet.

We soon discovered some reasons for this. The water was dead calm since Cambados is located up a broad estuary - the Ria de Arousa. And it's also a major fishing port, with this part of Spain being home to one of the European Union's largest fisheries.

This was brought home to us when visiting the huge local fish market, which crowded with people either laying the catch of different species into trays, inspecting the quality of the catch, or bidding to purchase the catch. The first two pictures show some o this activity.

And below we have some of the species on display: fish, shell-fish, crabs, and octopi.

































We were particularly taken with the auction system for the various baskets of sea-food. The bidding was going non-stop in the background and each bid was captured on panels mounted on the nearby wall.


The bids were, of course, in Euros.

All in all, it was an interesting start to our field-trip.











AS